


The Standard Formula Of Longing

by patriciaselina



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (of which I currently know zilch about tyvm), Extreme loquaciousness, F/M, Female!Watson, Genderswap, POV First Person, References to Suicide, References to Surgical Procedures, Spoilers 'til Reichenbach, minimal dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 08:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patriciaselina/pseuds/patriciaselina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genderbent Reichenbach drama AU | This is what I know about myself, without a doubt - I am the girl with ice blue eyes, from hospital room 202, yes, I used to be someone I don’t recall being, just as I used to love someone I can’t recall loving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Standard Formula Of Longing

**Author's Note:**

> _And, leaning back, with arms dangling, overcome and repeatedly shuddering, he whispered the standard formula of longing - impossible in this case, absurd, perverse, ludicrous and yet even here still sacred and respectable: ‘I love you!’_

 

 

 

****

* * *

Ice blue. It’s the only thing they use to tell me apart, the colour of my eyes. _That’s the girl with ice blue eyes,_ they tell each other, _the one in room 202_. These are the only other two things I know about myself, and I haven’t even seen myself yet.

I say ‘other’ because there are, by far, only two things that I have known, without any doubt whatsoever, ever since I regained consciousness - one, I have just been operated on the eyes, according to these lovely bandages blocking out where my eyes should be, and to a part of my subconscious that must have belonged to a doctor, what with its hobby of assessing and reassessing my injuries.

A doctor. I must’ve been a doctor, then, even though it sounds hard for me to believe, what with how I can’t even seem to save myself, from what I’ve been hearing. _A horrible, horrible accident. Be careful next time, darling_ , I hear from what seems to be the voice of an elderly woman - a mother, perhaps? _My_ mother?

This is the second thing about me that I know, without anybody having to tell me. I have lost something, some _one_ , most probably, what with the fact that I cannot even remember my vocation or my family or even the initials of my name. The doctors tell the people around me that it’s temporary, that it’ll come back eventually. They tell them this when they think that I’m fast asleep, when they think I’m clueless to the world around me.

I don’t talk, don’t move a muscle, so they always think of me like this. Like I’m broken beyond compare, like I’m helpless. Maybe I am, really, but I won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they were right all along.

Other voices come and go, in the darkness. _Come on, doll, keep on breathing,_ booms a familiar female voice, her smell slightly laced with alcohol and her boisterous tone slightly laced with tears. _We’ll have you up and at ‘em in no time_ , says another voice, male and familiar and for some reason not the man I seem to be looking for. _Hang in there, doctor,_ another man tells me, the tone of his voice almost cheeky in its confidence as he reaches out to squeeze my hand, and how can I just go and tell him that this is wrong wrong _wrong_ , he’s not the one I have been looking for, have been yearning for since this whole hospital jaunt began, when I don’t even know who I’m looking for?

Sometimes, when they I think I’m lost to dreamland, they call me Jean. _Jean Watson, medical doctor, captain of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers,_ says another man, with an almost official tone of voice, as if reading his line out of a government-issued file _. To think that you would be brought to this._

This was who I had been in their eyes, a soldier, a doctor, a daughter, maybe even - though I doubt this, _horrendously_ \- a friend. They know that I’m Jean, who has never been so weak and helpless before, apparently, and they know me better than I know myself, then, seeing as I cannot even remember how it is to become Jean, how to at least walk in her footsteps.

But, more than anything else, this is what I remember - I remember chasing after someone’s footfalls as the busy city streets whizzed around us. I remember watching the tails of a long coat as they fluttered in the breeze we kicked up, curly hair and a splash of dark blue. I remember laughing. I remember having the stars stretch out for miles, thinking that we had the rest of our lives.

And this, this sorry, vague recollection, is what hurts more than losing everything completely. I had something, and I lost it.

During the first days in I had thought that what I had lost had been my eyes. It was a bit obvious, wasn’t it - bandages wrapped ‘round like a blindfold, sobbing old ladies, a ‘terrible accident’ concerning shrapnel that nobody wanted to tell me about. But from what I had heard from the doctors/nurses/miscellaneous medical personnel manning my bedside, I do have eyes; they’re apparently a piercing ice blue, very much unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. I hear snippets of _government-funded healing, that bird is_ , and _bit of a special case, that one_ , and, for some inane reason, _who would be so stupid as to give those up?_

The answer to that last one was, apparently, _someone in love_ , but it’s not as if I could just open my eyes and ask them what they mean.

* * *

 

The dreams - no, nightmares - are what hurt the most, but I won’t be telling anyone that anytime soon.

There is blood, blood everywhere, and an odd-pitched screaming that could only be my own, even if I had never heard my own voice since the awakening. I am clutching something to my chest, fervently, and I see the same flash of curly hair, the same familiar splash of blue, and how everything had broken down and shattered around him -

 _No, God, not him,_ never _him -_

I push him away from the shattering glass, from the growing danger I can feel thrumming in my veins, and everything fades to black.

When I wake up, I hear my own exhausted breathing and a helpful beeping noise by my bedside informing me of my increasing heart rate. As if I needed a monitor to tell me that my pulse was pounding like a jackhammer against my skin.

“Oh,” says a voice at my bedside, completely unsurprised, tone clipped and deeper than anyone else I have ever heard. “You’re up, then.”

It’s always during nights like this that I receive him, I think. It’s as if he knows the exact moments when my bedside is unmanned, when the nightmares strike. A nagging voice at the back of my head tells me that _of course he does, you silly little girl_ , which should be disconcerting, but, amazingly, my fight-or-flight response says _stay_.

He must’ve been someone I knew, I think with a sudden ache in my chest, must have been he _who I had been looking for_. But he doesn’t introduce himself, doesn’t tell me who he is supposed to be, only talks for hours on end as if he knew I was not planning to talk to anyone, as if all he wanted to do was fill the silence between us.

And in the middle of listening him talk - about crime scenes and unkempt flats and a blogger who always made tea, always fussed like a mother hen, always kept her gun close and her emotions closer, who was _the most luminous of people, no doubt about it_ \- I think that there should be something I find familiar in it, some reason why I feel like curling up into myself when I hear his voice, why I chuckle when he mentions an ashtray, why my hand flinches reflexively as if around...something, when he tells me of a cabbie with some pills.

Sometimes he tells me things about how his flatmate hounded him into eating, how she had always been ready with a exclamation or a scathing remark as the moment needed. These times he chokes on what could only be a sob, and slumps deeper into the rickety metal chair beside me. “Would you look at that, Jean,” he’d chuckle, brokenly, humorlessly. “Body’s betraying me.”

And there has to be a reason why I am drawn to him, because those words - _body's betraying me_ - remind me of someone fighting back tears in front of a raging fireplace, and there has to be a reason why I want to reach for him and hold him close.

There is the obvious, of course, but I doubt it. If he really is who I think he is, then why doesn’t he tell me so, why doesn’t he visit in the mornings with everyone else, why doesn’t he move closer so that I can get rid of that lingering feeling that his hand is just alongside mine, close enough to touch?

If he really is who I think he is, then _why don’t I even remember his name?_

His hand hovers over my head, and stills. This is how I know that I have said the last words out loud - that and the sudden ache blooming in my throat, the reaction of muscles that have not been used for a while now. He snatches his hand away, and I can hear the gust of air that accompanies it - his fingers were about to graze the tips of my bangs, the fragile place where bandages met skin. There is, suddenly, an undercurrent to the air of my dark dreary hospital room, the urge to _want_ , to _touch_ , to _know_. He moves away from me, his steps accentuated by the dull _thud_ of a third beat.

 _Step-step-thud, step-step-thud_. Despite myself and this damned memory loss, the sound is oddly familiar.

“It’s because that’s how it’s supposed to be, Jean.” He says, and the click of the door as it closes behind him is the only thing that convinces me that it had all been real.

* * *

 

The next day, they tell me that Sherlock Holmes is dead. Jumped off the roof of St Barts, they say, and then they pause, turn to me and ask me if I’m okay.

I think they were expecting me to be saddened by this, and I am, even if I can’t remember why. Nobody talks to me that day, and at this point I don’t even want to try and ask.

* * *

 

The bandages come off, finally, and I can see everyone’s faces as they wait patiently for me to open my eyes fully.

When I do, however, they look like they’re about to weep, and the old woman closest to my bedside actually does. _That’s Mrs Hudson,_ says a voice in my head that I have no idea why I’m hearing now. He sounds oddly like the man who visited me that night.

I reach out to her, outside my own volition, and there must be someone coercing me to hold her close, smooth away the flyaway wisps of her hair, someone behind me coaching me through it all. But everyone is in front of me - _Lestrade, Molly, Stamford, Harriet - Harry, of course, that was her nickname, right, Jean? -_ and there is nothing but a window behind me. I don’t know this by sight, but he had been telling me  _there’s a window overhead, Jean, but no worries, you aren’t missing anything,_ as I consider the people around me.

“Calm down, Mrs Hudson, I’m fine,” I tell her, to both their surprise and mine. Where did that lump in your throat come from, Jean Watson, _where_? “I’m here, I’m fine. Please stop crying.” I say, and it’s rather hypocritical, considering how tears are beginning to threaten their escape from my eyes, as well. “Please.”

The people in the room - my guests, apparently - cluster tighter around me, and they still won’t look me in the eyes. The doctors do, but they look at me as if I’m an apparition or a freak show, which are gazes I soon learn to steer clear of.

I know my eyes are ice blue. That was what they had used to differentiate me from the other patients, when they had been talking about me before. I know full well that such a shade of blue would be a minority - especially now, in the different shades of green-blue-golden brown that flood my hospital room - but I didn’t know it would be _that_ jarring, to make them want to shy away from me, want to weep, even.

“Jean, darling,” Mrs Hudson says, looking up from the circle of my arms, and though she doesn’t show it I know it takes a great amount of strength for her to look at my eyes. “Does this mean you remember now?”

 _Mrs Hudson is your landlady,_ not _your housekeeper_ , chides the voice in my head lightly, and it takes all my composure not to wince at the familiarity of the voice. “Bits and pieces,” I say instead, in reply. “Not my housekeeper, right?”

And it shouldn’t garner such a response, no it shouldn’t, but Mrs Hudson’s sobs double in magnitude, and I could almost swear even the cool, silver-haired one - _Lestrade, Detective Inspector, easy to pickpocket, watches silly ball games with you_ \- is muffling a sob behind the back of his hand.

“What about him,” Lestrade forces out, earning him the look of everyone else in the room. He doesn’t shy away from the attention, though, he draws strength from it. What is this man going to ask me? “Do you remember Sherlock?”

There’s an aching in my chest all of a sudden, my throat feels as if it is closing up, and the world seems to move in slow-motion as I shake my head _no_. The voice in my head stays, intentionally, silent. I remember what the man from last night had told me - _it’s because that’s how it’s supposed to be._

Once again I am saddened, greatly, but I cannot for the life of me find out why.

* * *

 

A night before I am to be released, a man comes by to visit me. He turns on the night light so I can see his face. He is not curly-haired and he wears no shade of blue, and there is an umbrella in his hands that doesn’t accent his footfalls the way the other man’s...whatever-it-is, did. _Step-step-clink, step-step-clink._

He looks at me, once, only once. I hear him mutter, faintly, under his breath: _of course, he kept his word_.

Then he turns away, telling me to steer clear of mirrors for some reason, and hurries off. His escape is not quick enough for me to miss the damning hitch in his breath.

* * *

 

Mrs Hudson brings me home that afternoon. “It’s a good thing they’ve finally given up, those little hooligans.” she tells me as she brings tray after tray of biscuits and stew, miscellaneous sustenance. “They should just learn to leave well enough alone, is what I am saying. I should get them arrested, good thing Mycroft got them to stay off, at least for today.”

She reaches to tuck my fringe behind my ear, smiling wanly, sadly. “You need the rest, love. Call me if you need anything.” She says before going off, clearly thinking she could hide her tears from me.

The flat is definitely not how I would keep it - I am bombarded suddenly with images of sitting in a flat so stark and lonely that I could tout it hospital-sterile. Books fill the shelves almost to bursting, alarmingly interesting things like _The Stray Animal Cookbook_ side-by-side with a well-loved set of the _Encyclopaedia Britanica_. There is a folding blade impaling the top of the mantle, and test tubes litter the kitchen counters.

 _My flat mate is some kind of mad scientist then_ , I think, and I spend the night wondering why they haven’t come home.

* * *

 

The next day, I remember who my flatmate is. Well. Not really. ( _This is cheating_ , he would have told me, I think, had he been here, _you should remember who I am without having to resort to this._ ) But I saw a newspaper clipping with a picture of two people - a short-haired woman and a taller man with a long coat and a frown under his deerstalker. There are no other pictures of him littered across the flat; this would be particularly suspicious, if only I didn't think that maybe he just wasn't the photogenic type.

 _The consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his flatmate and companion, Doctor Jean Watson_ , the caption reads. The page it has been cut out of had been printed in greyscale, and I can’t make out the color of my hair, much less the colors of the leaves around us. I know that the picture had been taken in autumn, however, and I find myself puzzled as to how I knew this.

On closer inspection I see that he has written his name on all of his books. _Property of Sherlock Holmes_ , he’d write on the copyright pages of _How to Kill a Man with Cutlery_ , on the _Oxford English Dictionary_. There are letters pinned to the mantle, underneath the blade of the folding knife I noticed yesterday. Almost all of them addressed to _Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street,_ save for a few for _Dr Jean Watson and Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street,_ from Mycroft Holmes, clearly a relative of the man.

I decide to open the door to the bedroom, and am immediately assaulted with the smell of musty fabric conditioner, male perfume, and the barest hint of decomposition. Apparently Sherlock thought it appropriate to do his experiments on dead rabbits by his bedside, and despite the morbidity of this, some remembered hint of familiarity makes me smile.

There was a smile on my face, yes, until I remember what they had told me, at the hospital - _Sherlock Holmes is dead_. It is then that my blood runs cold, then that I press my face into his forgotten mattress and sob.

* * *

 

This is then how Mrs Hudson sees me - face smushed into the foot of Sherlock’s bed, my face moist from tears. “Oh dear,” she says, clearly worried, one hand to her heart as she hauls me up with the other. “You remember him, then.”

I don’t answer her until the first splash of water against my skin. “I remember _forgetting_ him, Mrs Hudson. Nothing less, nothing more.” I look at her, then, knowing full well how she shrunk away from my gaze, and how that man had told me _steer clear of mirrors_. “What were we?” I say, and I swear my voice is shaking. “Were we...was he my...”

It’s ludicrous, yes, but it’s by far the only reason I can think of, to explain away the confounded loneliness, the hole in my chest when I think about how he isn’t here, about how I knew him and forgot him and never will be able to know him.

“Heavens, _no_ , darling. That’s what _everyone_ thought you were, anyway.” Mrs Hudson replied, smoothing out the tangles of my hair as she splashed more of the cool water on my face. “You have to understand, though, the both of you made it extremely hard to think otherwise. The first night you moved in together, that boy took you out for dinner! I’ve never seen him willingly join someone in eating before, especially since he isn’t exactly one for eating, that silly boy.” She clucks, pure adoration in her voice. “I’ve brought you lunch, come on, I’ll go on when we’ve got some meat in you.”

As we sit down for lunch, Mrs Hudson continues on, true to her word, after I swallow down a few bites of stew. It’s rich and flavorful and I should be hungry, but I cannot seem to find the proper energy to do so. “Worked like a charm, the two of you. That boy can size up anybody at a glance, but the amount of things he knew about you were unrivalled. I remember one of his 3am violin stunts - he does those, and I don’t usually mind, really, but that night was kind of a bad one - and I hounded him for a reason until he finally relented. ‘Nightmares,’ he said, gesturing to the upstairs bedroom - where you slept, darling, but don’t you mind, we’ll clean out those dead bunnies and you can stay in his room for the meantime, would you like that?”

For some reason I remember hauling someone up a flight of stairs, tucking someone in bed. There could be no one else that man could have been other than him, it was his bedroom after all, and just like that the tears come again.

“No, Mrs Hudson, I’m fine with the sofa for now.” I tell her, forcing a smile to my face.

And even that was dangerous, now that I can almost remember someone in a blue dressing gown sulking in it.

* * *

 

I remember that book Molly read to me once, when I was half-alive and she was driven half-sane with worry. Sherlock would have hated it, would have said that romance is pointless and dying inevitable, but he isn’t here so he doesn’t need to have an opinion on it anyway.

I don’t fall in love like I fall asleep, no - but then again, I don’t fall asleep like the protagonist thinks most people do, _slowly, then all at once._ When I fall asleep, more often than not, I have no idea that I’ve done so until I’ve woken up. All at once, then whap-bam-crash a slow and building epiphany. With the sweet sound of denial in between - no, Sherlock, I was not ‘out like a light’ like you so crudely phrase it, no, Mrs Hudson, I purposefully intended to fall asleep after dinner.

It is this way, then, that I realize that even though I cannot remember the entirety of Sherlock Holmes, it does not stop me from falling in love with him.

* * *

 

The memories don’t go back to me as smoothly as my words and the shows on the telly would have you believe, no. It took me quite a while to remember Afghanistan, and to remember that Harry is my sister, which is - in both cases - a relief and a curse.

That first day, I really could not have known my visitors from specks of dust if the nagging, familiar, forgotten baritone of my thoughts didn’t decide to speak up at that very moment. And even then, I remembered how said voice had clammed up at the very mention of Sherlock Holmes.

He is the exception to the rule, really, but even then, my memories of him are vague like the rest of them, even vaguer, sometimes. I can only remember snatches of moments, like whiffs of perfume and gunpowder, the bite of handcuffs against my hands, the screeching of a bow against the strings of a violin. I can only barely make out his coat, and the tips of his curly hair, that dark blue scarf.

I can’t even look at him, cannot remember him well enough to make out the features of his face.

What little I know is what Mrs Hudson has told me - that he is - _was_ \- smart, frightfully so, different from everyone else in that he was great and brilliant and lonely, so, very, utterly lonely, and then we found each other and then. And then there were fights over protocol and privacy and takeaway, about forensics and riddles and people of interest, and there were also the blog posts and the backhanded compliments and the countless times we spent protecting each other. He was wonderful and brilliant and fantastic, and I was one of the few who ever told him so, and we knew each other for a little under two years but we made each other’s lives better. No, scratch that and restart - we _made_ each other’s lives, period.

Suddenly ‘I love you’ sounds rather underwhelming.

* * *

 

I am doing a rather pitiful attempt of cleaning, when I see the book. It is one from Sherlock’s truly sizable collection, and from the pristine condition of the pages I can see that he has not been reading it as much as he had been, say, _An Illustrated Guide To Decomposition_. Which is to expected, really - it’s a romance. A weird one, from what little I remember of my own weird-book phase, but still, a romance. Definitely _not_ his area; what has this been doing here?

There’s a page here that he marked off, and I see it, clearly. From the crispness of the folded-over corner, I could only say that he had bookmarked it only very recently, and the highlighter could, by all means, only have touched the page a full week before his death.

_And, leaning back, with arms dangling, overcome and repeatedly shuddering, he whispered the standard formula of longing - impossible in this case, absurd, perverse, ludicrous and yet even here still sacred and respectable: ‘I love you!’_

I am expecting to see the reason as to why he has selected this sentence to emphasize, to fold over and tuck away for recollection next time, a next time that will, for him, never come. I am expecting to see, with what little I have been told and what little I can recall about him, something in-character, like ‘ _dull’_ or ‘ _boring’_ or ‘ _this is what sentiment does to common mortals, note to self: please avoid.’_ But, of course, life isn’t that easy. I see nothing, and move on to the next book.

Ultimately, this is what life is. It makes one understand nothing, and then, as if there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, leaves one with no choice but to move on.

* * *

 

When Mrs Hudson takes me to his grave for the first time, I remember what happened to us that night.

Like I said before, my recollection is not perfect, or at least, as of recent times, it has not become perfect with regards to memories involving Sherlock Holmes. I can now remember Stamford’s wife’s name, as well as that of Molly’s cat, and I can remember Mrs Hudson’s favourite brand of tea just as well as I can remember the ale Lestrade got drunk on during the 221B Christmas party so long ago. But I find it hard to recall the notification alert on Sherlock’s phone, don’t even remember the piece he apparently always played for me on the violin.

But now, however. Now I see his name _Sherlock Holmes_ \- golden serif against black marble - and it all comes back to me. That night, we were handcuffed, running away from the cops, running across London as if we were invincible and nobody, not death, not Moriarty himself, could take us apart.

I was wrong, of course, because in the end _I_ was what took us apart. Took the shrapnel damage that was supposed to be for Sherlock, yes, that was what I did. It was not a matter of his eyes against mine, of pure and simple aesthetic sacrifice (I still cannot remember his face, but there is a nagging feeling in me that tells me that I had always loved Sherlock Holmes’ eyes); rather, it was a question of his life over mine, and that was a question whose answer, come to think of it, I had never really thought about.

The answer was, for me, set in stone. As long as I could save his life, that was always going to be the choice I’d go for.

Mrs Hudson gives me time alone with the tombstone, with his bones and lack of breath. I think she thinks it would help me, and not for once I find myself hoping she’s right.

I hold on to the tombstone with one hand, knees almost giving out beneath me, the cold marble nothing like the warmth I yearn for right now, and tears blur my eyes as I tell him. I tell him that I remembered forgetting him and now I just want him to not be dead, to explain, to be here. With me.

It’s by far the most desperate thing I have ever said, but it doesn’t matter because he will never be here to hear it, to scoff at it and chide me for being predictable. He will never be here to answers my pleas and my half-sobbed prayers, and that is what forces me to hold myself together, to click my heels together, stand up straighter, say farewell.

* * *

 

After what seems to be months of dreamless sleep, I wake up to a nightmare. _He isn’t there_ , a treacherous part of my mind whines, and another part snaps back _, of course he isn’t_.

It is then that the pieces all begin to fall into place. I was blinded from the accident, I know now, because I remember that my eyes used to be a deep, dark blue, almost black, not ice blue like the world says they are now. But still I am able to see - thanks to an organ donor, maybe, or some other convoluted kind of operation only Mycroft Holmes could sign off on? I do not know the details - the mechanics were not made clear to me.

Still, then, I was blinded, left recovering.

Before the accident I was hand-in-hand with Sherlock Holmes, my flat mate, my consulting detective, my...everything I had in the world. We were on the run from the law, from death, from Moriarty, but they all caught up on us anyway, because when dawn broke I was being wheeled to a hospital and he was long gone.

News broke about his death a mere three days later, if I remember correctly. I think I'm capable enough to do the math by myself.

Sherlock Holmes didn’t _just_ die - he killed himself, took his life in his hands and literally threw it off a building. What happened in the span of a few days that could have driven him to do that? I got blinded, yes, but Sherlock Holmes is the kind of man who shrugs off sentiment, so surely he cannot take his life over something as petty as worry over my condition.

Instead, he took his life because he was running from Moriarty and I was tagging along, was doing nothing but bleeding and weighing him down. At least in death I won’t be there to burden him - most probably, that was what he was thinking.

This makes me sad, and angry, and I feel the warmth of tears glazing the surfaces of my borrowed eyes, can feel my mouth poised to scream at the unfairness of it all. I thought we already learned enough from the first time we faced Moriarty - both of us together, or none at all. No, even this time, even this last time, he didn’t even think of me as someone important enough to factor in his plans, to at least just be with him.

And more than anything, more than the bullet to the shoulder or the psychosomatic limp that grows in intensity with each passing day, more than the Baskerville hallucinations or the shrapnel to the eyes, this is what hurts the most. The thought that my best friend, the man I have learned to remember and love, never really cared about me at all.

* * *

 

A month after that, I move out of 221B Baker Street.

I love Mrs Hudson, really, and I cannot bear to leave her alone just when she didn’t dare leave me to myself, but this flat reminds me of Sherlock so much, of the few things of him I recall and the things about him that I have long since lost to the unforgiving abyss of my mind. 221B has not been just _my_ flat, _ever_ , and even if I have long since forgotten most of it I know that this is the space we shared, the pinprick-point in the galaxy where we belonged.

And despite anybody’s efforts to the contrary - friends, landladies, erstwhile suitors - I cannot just follow the rules of the universe - cannot accept the fate of understanding nothing and moving on, cannot live in this flat that seems empty without his existence within its walls.

So I move out and away, but I don’t, _can’t_ , really move on. I still love him, yes, but I hate him, too, hate him for packing up and leaving me behind. There is really nothing I can do to fix that, what with me being a mere mortal and him being six feet under, so I carry on as the world expects me to, not really paying any attention to what I am doing.

* * *

 

As time goes on I understand the sense in Moriarty’s ring tone, the discontent in _Staying Alive_. It’s just _staying_.

* * *

 

I don’t count the days since I lost him.

I’m sentimental, yes, but not fully insane. ( _Yet_.) But I know enough to know that it’s been years since his fall. I still don’t remember everything - as time goes on I’ve slowly begun to remember the bulk of it, of the life I once lived, but I still cannot remember _everything_ , and I’ve come to terms with that.

And – yes, just in case anyone was still wondering – it still physically pains me, failing to remember the face of the man I love.

Poets and great men and friends and landladies tell me that time heals all wounds, and while it’s done wonders for my physical ones, so far it has done nothing for my metaphorical ones. For the Sherlock-inflicted ones.

Sometimes when I’m alone I throw all caution to the wind and look at myself in the mirror. I still look primarily like the same Jean I almost remember, though I’ve recently grown my hair out longer, look a little older. And then, of course, there are the eyes - the ice blue every bit as striking as the odd looks I keep receiving lead me to believe. Sometimes they appear to be a pale grey, making me look like something not-quite-human, sometimes the blue eyes bloom with the faintest hints of teal, depending on how the light decides to hit them. They’re different, captivating, and every time I see them I cannot help but mimic my visitors’ actions in a hospital room that now seems like an eternity ago, and weep.

This must be why that man - _Mycroft_ , I remember him almost completely now - told me to steer clear of mirrors, then. _Don’t look at them, because they will only make you cry._ But I doubt that; I think there’s something more to this, something I think I should be getting.

All they could tell me was that my eyes came from an organ donor card. This means that the original owner of my eyes is dead, yes, but the sadness over death is something that must have been dulled by my time as a doctor and as a soldier, as a consulting detective’s assistant, something accepted as a fact of life - so why is there still a throbbing ache in my chest, every time I struggle to reconcile my eyes to their faceless owner?

* * *

 

Italy is a _beautiful_ place. I know this not by some kind of tourist folly, for it’s by far not the first time I’ve been here before.

Years ago – the rest of our lives happened _years_ ago, now, obvious – I remember the two of us being shipped off here, both our half-asleep bodies dragged out of the doors of 221B, into one of Mycroft’s private jets. We had apparently angered someone ‘marginally important’ and now had to be kept far, far away from London, to somewhere the old sod could keep his bulbous eyes on us more than he usually could. Rome, with its statuesque scenery and millions of tourists, was the perfect choice.

I am supposed to remember dreary hours of waiting for the phone call giving a green light on our jet home, but no, this is not what I remember most about the affair. Instead, I remember gorging ourselves full of gelato, tossing perfectly spendable currency in the fountains, sticking our hands in a hole in the wall that was apparently this country’s poor excuse for a lie detector.

I remember the way my pulse turned staccato when you pretended to lose your hand to the depths of _Bocca della Verità_ , your dominant hand, at that. Do you remember that too? It’s been years, I doubt it.

Surprisingly, walking these cobblestone-lined streets back then had not felt like a waste of time, and I actually found myself dreading our trip home, did you know that? I didn’t think you’d have noticed then, but that’s all right – _I_ didn’t expect I would be thinking this way, either. But you were just so happy when you looped your arm through mine and dragged me off to see this-and-that, with a smile so dazzling it could have made the Earth stop revolving, that I did not want it to stop.

I know that mutual interests were what put us together, that we both really did like the work, but this was the first time I ever saw you excited over something that didn’t involve murder or espionage or the Game in all its totality, and it was…wonderful, to say the least. For once in my life I wanted to leave it all behind, to start over and live again. It doesn’t even have to be here, it could be anywhere, as long as it was me, and you.

Such silly, frivolous thoughts. You would probably not be proud of me right now.

On our last night here, we went to this beautiful restaurant for dinner. It was family-owned and candlelit and Angelo is a dear friend of ours but we both agreed that he cannot hold a candle to this on his best day. We talked about silly things like siblings and childhoods and hobbies (or the dear lack of value we both put to such trivial pursuits), and it was the most we’ve both spent laughing since the jaunt to the Palace with an ashtray and a bed sheet.

You were the one who told me about the wall – surprisingly, seeing as I never thought you to be one for those kinds of stories. Stuck in the middle of the line of fire, with nothing but this wall and the open air left for protection, a family prayed for salvation. Bombs were unleashed, but no one else was hurt – the first wish granted. People flock here asking for wishes to be granted, and return with letters, note cards and even plaques when they do occur. Despite my hesitation and your sarcasm, we both made wishes here, side-by-side. We never told each other what we wished for, but there had been a sparkle of mischief in your eyes that made me think you already knew mine.

I never really did know if you figured it out, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that my wish, silly as it may have seemed, did come true.

After all, when it came down to it: better you, than me. Right?

* * *

 

The wall hasn’t changed much since I last laid eyes on it. There are new notes of gratitude, of good tidings and happiness, blocking out the small bits of negative space that used to be here when I – when _we_ – passed by that one last night. But I’ve never really been good at picking out detail – that was not my forte, it was _his_.

Italy is a beautiful place. That at least is something I can concur with. Beautiful, and dangerous, like him in every way. I remember the first nights I spent here, after the reassignment; nights spent avoiding the streets our footsteps touched, lurking into shadows and dark alleys to find someone to beat the living daylights out of. I was just so happy to be far away from London, to be far away from the city he loved the most…that it hadn’t occurred to me that I was in another city that I would only bear to associate with him.

A couple of months after, some Italian lessons taken and some Mafia hooligans beaten half to death later (hey, whoever said I was never up for anger management lessons is seriously having trouble _seeing_ ), it became bearable. Not better, just bearable, and believe it or not, it’s enough.

Still, his name is something I cannot even bear to think about, now. It’s been years, but everything still cannot help but hurt. I still love him, I still hate him. Now I know why he always wanted to disregard sentiment – feelings _hurt_.

I remember our night out, how we’d both set aside our myriads of doubts and stood, here, side-by-side, our hands clasped and eyes shut. After, I’d grinned at him, planning full well to ascertain whatever it is he’d wished for through process of elimination. I know that I probably would not have succeeded, but then again I was never able to try. He was up for Moriarty’s trial a week later, and after that everything went to hell.

That time, I lost him. Usually I would have said that we lost each other, but even now I don’t know if he purposefully left me behind. He’s dead now; I know I will never know his reasons, and it hurts but it’s the truth and I have to live with it.

 _God damn it_ , _Sherlock,_   _you beautiful bastard_. I shake my head, frowning, only barely holding myself together.  _We didn’t even get to say goodbye, didn’t we?_

Normally I should be chiding myself for being so silly as to entertain such juvenile thoughts. (It should be jarring, how day by day the inner voice guiding my actions begins to sound more and more like him, but it isn’t. It sounds right, sounds almost _perfect_.) But something about this wall wants me to give in, to think the thoughts I try very hard to avoid. And just like that, the dam breaks.

 _Just one more miracle for me_ , I think as my arm reaches out to touch the wall, to touch the fluttering tips of stationary. _Just for me, can you do this for me?_

And like that, just like that, I open my eyes, tears finally deciding to fall, and it is then that I see him.

He’s lost his trench coat, and his scarf. (Of course, I have it – still keep it with me, stuffed underneath the dregs of all my clothing, and every time laundry time comes and it is all the drawers have left I hold it close to me and force myself to breathe.) But it amazes me that, with what little I remember of him, of his face, I can look at him, at his layers of disguise, look past the dyed curls and the ill-fitting clothes and the feigned air of normalcy and see that it can be no one else but him.

On his face is an oversized pair of sunglasses, perfectly dark and opaque, and just like that, my heart decides to skip a beat. 

* * *

The truth is, at that time, I wasn’t exactly _thinking_ straight. Doesn’t mean I’d have chosen otherwise if I had been, though.

Mycroft had people, and that was the only reason why it ever happened at all. I guess that means I owe him, but he doesn’t like me saying that. _Your landlady was right_ , he had told me, when the news broke and I knew I was to be sent running. _Family is all we have in the end._

It is a testament to how finely-tuned his machinations are that mere moments after I called him, a bleeding body in my arms, my mind in perfect disarray, there were people sent to take the both of us, and he knew what I was planning without me having to say a word. Guess all that time spent watching me go about on my own on the CCTVs finally paid off.

Good thing is (at least it is for me, and my slowly-decreasing sanity), her curiosity has dulled since we split paths. If she were to look deeper into her medical records, into the struck-out lines of her donor history, she would know the truth. Chronologically the surgery happened first before my demise, but that’s nothing a little government-issued meddling couldn’t fix; it would still be my name on her records.

We have property here, us brothers. This is where he hid me away, which should be ludicrous, really – I’d planned on scouring the world, flitting from place to place until all that’s left of me are a vague memory and a tombstone over an empty casket. But he would have none of it, and usually I’d be proving him wrong but between my loneliness and my _situation_ I don’t think I can.

And, besides, he knows me enough to know that no matter where I go, it would not stop me from trying to find my way back to her.

Even then, when our operating tables were put side-by-side and government-issued doctors swarmed around us, I remember trying to reach for her hand as everything faded away.

I had my doubts, yes, but I just as quickly put them away. After all, she always did like my eyes. 

* * *

He’s walking away, now. I spend so much time with my mouth open, about to scream but not letting out a sound (that’s familiar), that I don’t even notice how far he’s gone.

It is then that I see him, _really_ see him. He’s walking amongst and being jostled by a crowd he’d normally deduce the hell out of, and yet he doesn’t even move a muscle. It is then that I finally remember his face – from the smirk of his lips to the juts of his cheekbones to his eyes, perfectly pale, ice blue, sometimes grey and sometimes tinged with the barest hints of teal. It is then that I see the piece of paper, perfectly normal amongst the plaques and colors, with rounded corners and a ripped edge. There are only two lines, in black ink, in a hand I both remember and forget:

_Jean is alive._

_-SH_

Unlike the other exultations, there is no ‘thank you’, but I know him enough to know that this is the closest he will ever get. I also know him enough to know that what he hated the most, amongst all other things, was stating the obvious, so there is no reason for him to be so appreciative of the fact that I am alive – and here the tears flood my vision – if it _wasn’t what he had been wishing for_.

He would have been proud, I think as I scrub the tears away, if he knew how quickly it took me to come to this conclusion. I look to my right and – there, there he still is, with his mop of lovely curls bleached red and a gait I’d know anywhere, and would you look at that there is where my cane has been all these years. My trusty aluminum cane, the one I quickly forgot – along with its matching psychosomatic limp – when I met him. _Step-step-thud, step-step-thud_.

From the hospital to my memories to right here, right now – it had been him, all along. Always and forever, _him_.

With that thought in mind, tears still blurring my vision, I put one foot in front of the other, and start to walk.

* * *

 

_But it seemed to him as if the pale, charming psychagogue out there were smiling to him, beckoning to him; as if he were raising his hand from his hip and pointing outward, floating before him into a realm of promise and immensity._

_And, as he had done so often, he set out to follow him._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, first and foremost! Once again I have found myself writing a sad Sherlock fic. Has this been my signature genre all along? Once more I would like to apologize for the sheer mass of my author’s notes. It’s a bad habit of mine, sorry.
> 
> This time I find myself putting some of the blame on my mum, however - both the blame, and the root of this story going into fruition. Her favourite MV ever happens to be [_Because I’m a Girl_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yD4OfY8cM) by the early-to-middle ‘90’s Kpop group Kiss. She had been suggesting I write something based on it since my early fic writing days (immediately after I wrote the also-Kpop-inspired Hetalia Philippines fic [_Day By Day_](http://community.livejournal.com/hetalia_ph/262426.html#cutid1), so somewhere in my final year in high school), and I haven’t been able to watch it then, so I set it aside. Now, however...yes, I am aware of the trite, almost cliche plot points more creatively spun by many a telenovela, but I am a sap and that MV actually made me cry, what can I do.
> 
> The title, however, obviously does not come from the lyrics of the song, but from my favourite novella in the history of forever, _Death In Venice_ – where both centered quotations (“ _And, leaning back…”, “But it seemed to him…”_ ) also come from. Yes, it is my favourite. Yes, I do know saying so makes me sound terribly odd. Stalking and odd bouts of pedophilia aside, that ridiculous amount of self-restraint, as well as that equally ridiculously consuming love, kind of reminds me of someone very familiar...especially the last line of the second quotation. The ending is intentionally vague, but I guess from that line we can see where it’s going to end up with, ultimately. And no, in the end, nobody’s going to die. Faked or otherwise.
> 
> John is a woman here for no other reason than the fact that I had been in the middle of writing the sixth chapter of [_the deceit of my lips_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/763434) and was thus kind of in a fem!Watson state of mind. It could just as easily been about the actual, male John, come to think of it, just switch some words around, but this is how my mind sees it right now. Sherlock is a guy because I always found it easier to write him as one. And besides, I have written about them in the other possible same-gender combinations - as two guys for [_Second Person Synthesis_](http://archiveofourown.org/series/39704) and as two girls for _the deceit of my lips_. Maybe, following this pattern, I’d be writing about John and fem!Sherlock next time?
> 
> If you’ve seen _Roman Holiday_ , then I guess you’d know where Jean and Sherlock’s Roman jaunts come from. I just only really wanted to use the concept of that wishing wall; everything else followed after. Sherlock uses a Moleskine notebook, yes. Also, Sherlock’s book titles come from _Sherlock: The Casebook_ , which is a birthday gift from my lovely Ate Sisi. Speaking of book, why yes I did just make a _The Fault In Our Stars_ reference.
> 
> Again, thanks for reading! Comments would be lovely, of course, I haven’t seen them on my fics for a long while now.


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